In an astonishing series of events, a transgender man from the US had an unplanned pregnancy during his transition and went ahead to raise the child with his current husband. He says that he wants more children before his full gender reassignment surgery.

Ash Patrick Shade is a 28-year-old person from West Virginia. Ash is a mental health worker and PhD student. He had been two years into the transition and got pregnant after having a one-night stand through Grindr. Grindr is a location-based social networking and online dating application targeted toward gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

Ash was taking testosterone and estrogen blockers during this period, which does not allow one to conceive. He accidentally discovered that he was pregnant in February 2020. Ash stopped his hormonal treatment after finding out that he was pregnant. Ash decided to continue the pregnancy. Ash met his husband, Jordan, a month after understanding that he had conceived. Later that year, Ash gave birth to a daughter, Ronan.

Ash married Jordan in 2021, four months after Ronan was born. The couple is now raising their daughter together. Ash wants to hold off his gender reassignment surgery as he wants to raise more children with Jordan. He underwent top surgery to remove his breasts after giving birth to Ronan.

Ash revealed that he was going through a rough patch in 2019 and 2000 due to an ongoing divorce case with his then-husband. His mental health was severely affected, and he started going for Grindr hook-ups, wherein he accidentally got pregnant. Ash said that it was a huge shock, but he fell in love with his baby bump and went ahead with the pregnancy, braving the medical risks and dysphoria.

Ash also informed that he had a nightmarish childhood because of gender dysphoria and had attempted suicide too. He remembers that he always felt that he was in the wrong body and was sent to conversion therapy by his parents to fix him. He added that he always wore gothic dark clothes to hide how he looked and identified himself as Ash in the school. In an embarrassing incident for him, his mother once sent him to school dressed as a girl, and the schoolteacher declared him Ashley, a girl. Thereafter, he went from being a popular kid to a nobody.

Ash further added that he is immensely grateful to the online gay and trans community, the Satanic Temple, of which he is a member too, and his close friends for helping him sail through the pregnancy journey. He said that it was an incredible experience to bring life into the world as a 'seahorse parent’.

Ash looks forward to telling his daughter how she was brought up and that he is both her mom and dad. He feels that being a man is about what one does to help others and what one can achieve and accomplish.

(Inputs from various agencies)

(Rehash/Dr. Sushmita Ganguli)